Henry David Thoreau

Do what you love. Know you own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.

There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living.

If I seem to boast more than is becoming, my excuse is that I brag for humanity rather than for myself.

Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.

Poetry implies the whole truth, philosophy expresses only a particle of it.

There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted.

We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.

For what are the classics but the noblest thoughts of man? They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old.

The universe is wider than our views of it.

Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

If you learn to practice love, compassion, joy, and equanimity, you will know how to heal the illnesses of anger, sorrow, insecurity, sadness, hatred, loneliness, and unhealthy attachments.

You can never really live anyone else’s life, not even your child’s. The influence you exert is through your own life, and what you’ve become yourself.

We’re comic. We’re all comics. We live in a comic time. And the worse it gets the more comic we are.

Life must be filled up, and the man who is not capable of intellectual pleasures must content himself with such as his senses can afford.

Just write every day of your life. Read intensely. Then see what happens. Most of my friends who are put on that diet have very pleasant careers.

Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can.

Excessive literary production is a social offense.

Of what significance are the things you can forget.

The highest compact we can make with our fellow is – Let there be truth between us two forevermore.

It is not enough to conquer; one must learn to seduce.

Wine makes a man more pleased with himself; I do not say it makes him more pleasing to others.